Lonely Highway to Cool California

We spent the first day of Week 2 of our trip crossing Nevada. We went straight across the middle of the state from east to west. Chris had been commenting on how boring the highway was. Sure enough, we saw a sign labeling US Highway 50 as the “Loneliest Road in America”. Haha, yes pretty lonely indeed.   

We had spent one night in Ely, Nevada which was a stop on the Pony Express Trail on which horseback riders would deliver mail between Missouri and Sacramento, keeping the East connected to the West.

The days of the Pony Express are over but today these cute baby goats live at the KOA Campground in Ely, Nevada:

We spent three pleasant nights outside of Reno at the Gold Ranch Casino and RV Resort. We were back in the land of green with shade trees around us and a patch of soft grass at our campsite. Jack got out of the RV and right away started rolling around in the grass; I’m sure it felt good after all the gravel and dirt patches we’d been in.

We visited the cute town of Truckee, just across the border in California, where the Donner Party pioneers got snowed in and spent the winter of 1846-47 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. The survivors resorted to cannibalism of the dead. Today, Donner Lake is named in their memory and Donner Pass Road is the main street of Truckee.

We had drinks at a bar called Cottonwood that overlooks the town. The bar and restaurant is at the site of one of the nation’s oldest ski lodges. You can still see the remains of the old ski lift.

Lake Tahoe was beautiful with clear blue water surrounded by snow-capped mountains. We watched the England versus Croatia World Cup game in a bar across the street from the lake at a place called Kings Beach. The beautiful sandy beach made it feel like we were at the ocean instead of at a lake. Brown sand instead of white, and no waves told me otherwise. The nearby fresh-smelling pine trees were another clue.

We hiked around Emerald Bay and saw huge redwood trees.

Being at a high elevation made the hike from the lake back up to the parking lot a challenge but we appreciated the dry weather that makes 90 degrees more bearable than in the Houston humidity. 

We’re glad to be out of the desert and making progress on our journey up to the Pacific Northwest.